


breathe in breathe out

by kurdoodle



Category: PRISTIN (Band), Pledis Girlz (Band), SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Canon, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-16 01:24:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9267506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurdoodle/pseuds/kurdoodle
Summary: Nayoung's philosophy for fame and love: don't dive in headfirst if you can enjoy it enough with getting your feet wet. Don't set yourself up for drowning if you can cling onto the land. In which Seungcheol is her breath of fresh air, her solace in her lacking moments, and the one with whom she wouldn't mind dancing her life away.





	

Nayoung knows how to be thankful for what she has received. As much as people tell her otherwise, she knows she doesn’t deserve any of this: the stage, the lights, the cameras, the people beyond the stage screaming her name. She can soak it in appreciatively, but only lets it sink a few millimeters deep. She’s heard horror stories. Some are driven crazy by the chaos of it all. Don’t dive in headfirst if you can enjoy it enough with getting your feet wet. Don’t set yourself up for drowning if you can cling onto the land. Nevertheless, she is happy enough.

  
Questions still bubble up faster than they are answered, faster than her one-shot rise to fame as part of a rose-tinted cutthroat TV show, quite literally one girl among a sea of many. The crux of the matter is, why her? Why was she the one who won a popularity contest to debut in one of the most anticipated girl group projects of the year? How did she end up being the one to lead nine other girls through years of training? In the end, how much of it was talent and how much of it was people ogling at her figure? Is this what she had initially imagined life being like?

  
It has been a while since she was a scrawny young teenager, relatively long arms stiffly hanging by her sides, joints and muscle not as fluid as she would like them to be. At the height of her awkwardness, they tell her that she’s star material. They tell her that she was - and is - beautiful. Some girls at school would gossip about her trainee life, muttering behind cupped hands that it was her face that got her in, and nothing else. She grows used to tuning them out, training her expression to remain stoic through it all. Endure it during the day, then go to the studio and prove them wrong behind closed doors. One day the doors will open and they’ll be put to shame, she thinks as she rehearses until her throat is sore.

  
It is at this point in her life, when she feels like a victim of imposter syndrome and the classic teenage angst, that Im Nayoung meets Choi Seungcheol, a same-aged boy under the same company.

  
(“Let’s get along well,” he had said, with a grin that could light up a whole stage.

  
“Alright, let’s,” she had replied, suddenly aware of how gross her unkempt hair must look.

  
Later, he had assured her that he’s ten times as gross, leaning in close so she could get a good view of his hair plastered to his temple with sweat - and she wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be comforting or disgust-inducing, but she had laughed all the same.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To Nayoung, Seungcheol is a breath of fresh air. Really, everyone at the company is quite enjoyable to be around - lovable Siyeon, always dependable Yebin, soft-as-a-marshmallow Jieqiong - even the boys are endlessly rowdy and entertaining. But in the midst of the buzz of activity, tense energy reaching unhealthy heights, Nayoung likes to retreat into a practice room on the second floor, sipping on her yogurt drink and listening to music with her back pressed up against the cold wall. Breathe in, breathe out.

  
One day, her silent reverie is disturbed by a ruckus by the entrance, followed by the lights flickering on.

  
“Oh my gosh, Nayoung, you scared me there,” Seungcheol says, extricating himself from the boxes he’d tripped over. “What were doing in here with the lights so dim?”

  
Nayoung shrugs. “Resting.”

  
He quirks an eyebrow, not quite satisfied with her answer.

  
“Meditating on how I can achieve world domination, I mean,” her lips break into a soft smile. “As per usual, you know how I am.”

  
He walks over and sits beside her, his back straightening against the same wall. “Great, that’s exactly what I came here to think about, too,” he replies easily, grabbing the other yogurt drink next to her feet. “You mind?”

  
Nayoung shakes her head and gestures him to drink. She watches as he punches in the straw and takes his first sip, and it’s only now that she can fully register the sharpness of his jaw and his (unfairly) long eyelashes.

  
He gulps down his drink, making a satisfied sound. “Whatchu lookin’ at?”

  
She immediately averts her gaze, sipping on her straw to distract herself just to realize that the bottle is empty. “Nothing,” she mumbles.

  
“Hmm,” he murmurs. Pauses. “Do you come here often?”

  
She bites her lip. No one else really knows about her secret spot. She glances back at him, then back to the floor, then back at him, considering for a moment before deciding that secrets are meant to be shared, at least with those who are special.

  
She didn’t know it was possible for someone’s smile to be so pure. He looks at her expectantly, lips poised over his straw. She dives in headfirst and thinks that maybe, just maybe, Seungcheol could be a bit special.

  
“Yeah,” she divulges.

  
“Great,” he responds, a twinkle in his eye. “See you around then, Nayoung - I need to get back to the other guys.” He gets up to leave, but not before waving goodbye animatedly in the doorway. “By the way, do you -” he points to the light switch, unsure.

  
“It’s alright,” she laughs, shooing him away. He’s left his empty yogurt drink next to her own. As she stares at the pair of empty containers, she thinks that it’s nice having someone with whom to share things. Maybe she’ll always bring two drinks from now on, just in case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2013, she and three of the girls are chosen to perform with some of the Seventeen trainees. One day, they’re summoned to the guys’ practice room where the cameras are set up, ushered in to introduce themselves. The room is chaos as usual, and she’s struck by how natural the boys are in front of the camera, noting how she still has much to get used to. Luckily, they’re doing the absolute most to lighten up the atmosphere, and she finds herself clapping along to their exaggerated reactions to the girls’ introductions. Soonyoung, especially, makes all sorts of commotion, and she can’t help but giggle.

  
At some point, she becomes aware of Seungcheol’s presence beside her. She glances out of the corner of her eye and sees him dressed in a dark blue polo shirt, fixing his hair. At this time something in the back of her mind briefly wonders what he would look like with his hair pushed back to reveal his forehead, but she digresses. Alas, the camera is here, and so she remains relatively frozen, pasting a smile on her face.

  
After she introduces herself, all she can register is his excessive laughter and the giddy smile on his face. He’s extra alive today, extra restless, and so she’s not surprised that he gets pulled to the back of the room. She finds herself tracing his movement as he walks away, eyes trained on his back. The moment she remembers that this isn’t the time to do such things, she purses her lips and turns back to the front, maintaining her composure.

  
“Five, six, seven, eight,” Hansol is uttering through ragged breaths as they practice the dance together later that day. Nayoung tries to etch the moves into her muscle memory, but her heart is not in the choreography.

  
Instead, she thinks about Seungcheol’s laugh earlier that day, his comforting presence that towered slightly above her, the charisma with which he cared for and led his fellow trainees. Since when was she so attracted to him? This isn’t what she had signed up for, and she hates herself for thinking so much about him and his stupid boyish looks.

  
“Uh, are you okay? Need to rest?” Hansol interjects into her thoughts.

  
“Sorry, what?”

  
“You’re hitting a lot of the moves late. Maybe we should take a break,” Hansol explains, walking over to his water bottle next to the mirror.

  
Nayoung brushes back her slightly damp hair. “Oh, yeah, sorry, I’ll make sure to focus more from now on,” she replies sheepishly.

  
As she goes to sleep that night, she realizes that the waters are rising up to her waist, and rising still.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Good luck,” Seungcheol whispers before she climbs up the stairs to the raised platform that was the stage. He’s dressed in more formal attire, even wearing a black tie to match the rest of his ensemble. She had seen the guys rehearsing, and she’d be lying if she said he wasn’t hot when he danced, especially in that outfit which perfectly accentuated his broad shoulders and sturdy frame. Her thoughts have indeed been quite shameless lately.

  
“Thanks,” she grins back at him, feeling the familiar rush of performing on stage again. Moments like these, when she’s in the wings and preparing to face the lights, remind her of why she pursued this dream in the first place.

  
“Don’t be too close to Hansol,” Seungcheol comments off-handedly, but his voice is laced with good-natured humor. “That kid is dangerous,” he jokes. She isn’t sure if it’s just the dim lighting here or if his eyes darken a bit in spite of the lightness of his tone.

  
“What about Mingming?” Nayoung shoots back, testing the waters. Mingming is her other partner in the choreography.

  
“Him too,” he whispers, before he’s shuttled away by his other members.

  
Nayoung rolls her eyes. “Whatever.” But as she steps onstage, she smiles to herself. It’s a tad random, but - a part of her decides that one day she would like to dance with Seungcheol instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They never end up establishing anything besides the fact that they are good friends. For Nayoung, this is enough, even as she realizes that the deep end of the water is a lot deeper than she thought. Never would she have imagined the depth of his eyes or the amount of joy one could possess just from catching a glimpse of a certain someone - enough to fill the most gaping abyss up to the brim. Their tradition comprises of yogurt drinks on the second floor practice room, lights slightly muted to rest their eyes, even if her heartbeat seems to be doing the opposite of resting whenever he is around. It also consists of texts late into the night, shared worries over debuting and being the oldest in their respective teams, hoping to lighten the burden that they both feel on their shoulders. She looks at Seungcheol and feels like he actually understands, on a level that even the other younger girls can’t.

  
Once, they find themselves at the cusp of the abyss, teetering off the edge into the unknown. They’re sitting next to each other, and her head unconsciously leans into his shoulder as she feels her eyelids drooping.

  
“Tired?” he murmurs, adjusting her head so that it rests steadily in the crook of his neck. She can feel the vibrations of his voice against her skin, and yet she doesn’t shy away from their closeness.

  
“Seungcheol,” she blurts aloud, then closes her mouth. She doesn’t have a plan for what she was going to say, really, so she just leaves it at that.

  
“What?” he asks anyway.

  
“Nothing.”

  
She hears him suck in a breath of air. Breathe in, breathe out.

  
“Nayoung, can I tell you something?”

  
“Well, can you?” she mirrors him, but nods to urge him on.

  
He jostles a little bit as he swallows, but uses his hand to keep her still against him. “I think you’re really beautiful.”

  
Nayoung feels heat rising in her cheeks. Says nothing in response and waits, frozen.

  
“And you’re so talented, too. I honestly think you’re going to make it big. Everyone is going to love you so much, Nayoung.”

  
She chews her bottom lip. “You think so?”

  
“Yeah, for sure. But remember, a few years from now, when you debut and it all comes true, that I said it first and loved you before anyone else did.” He finishes his sentence with a slurp from his yogurt drink and lets his words simmer in the air. Her mind, tired as it is, works on overdrive to comprehend his meaning.

  
Her eyes widen. She detaches herself from his shoulder and sits up, staring at him. He’s already staring at her, his gaze softening. “Do you mean…?” she breathes, unsure.

  
He nods slowly. No words can describe the expression on his face - haphazard hope upon his lips, unspoken yearning in his eyes. It all feels like a dream. Then:

  
“I like you, Im Nayoung.”

  
She blinks, swallows. Her hand reaches for her yogurt drink, only to bump into his hand, skin brushing against her own. Seungcheol seems to be in an extra courageous mood today because he reaches out to entangle their fingers - gingerly, carefully, gently.

  
This is all she ever dreamed of, right? It had all lead up to this moment from the hour they first met, to the minute he first found her in her secret hideout, to those whispered fleeting seconds backstage. To Nayoung, isn’t Seungcheol her breath of fresh air? Solace during her lacking moments? The one with whom she had imagined dancing the rest of her life away?

  
And yet -

  
And yet.

  
Something within her breaks and snaps ever so quietly such that you’d have to listen very carefully to register it. But the room is silent, save for the sound of their breathing. Seungcheol, her breath of fresh air - and yet why does she suddenly feel suffocated? It reminds her of drowning.

  
She untangles her fingers from his and hugs her arms to her stomach, feeling very much like the lanky awkward girl she had been when she first entered the company. Clueless, lost, and frankly, scared of the future. What Nayoung realizes is that some things never do really change.

  
“I’m sorry,” she chokes out, and her heart breaks when she sees him furrow his eyebrows in confusion and worry. “I think I need some time.”

  
He nods in understanding, running his hand through his hair, pent-up emotions like static electricity.

  
What she doesn’t say, when she leaves through the doorway without bothering to wave goodbye:

  
_I like you too, Seungcheol._   


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“What’s wrong?” Yebin waves a hand in front of Nayoung’s face. “Spacing out again, huh?”

  
Nayoung blinks. “Well, isn’t this normal?” she mumbles.

  
The other girl gives her a concerned look. “Not this. Not like this. Nuh-uh, not normal.”

  
“Yeah, you’re extra distracted lately,” Jieqiong comments, massaging Nayoung’s shoulders.

  
“I’m just thinking.” A sigh.

  
Her heart is stuck in the practice room on the second floor, and her mind wanders to wherever he must be.

  
She gazes across the room to see Siyeon working hard on her choreography, her hair swept up in a messy bun. Eunwoo, the newcomer, joins her to stretch in front of the mirror. Yebin turns on the music and grabs a mic in the corner. After Jieqiong finishes the impromptu massage, she also disappears to grab her guitar from the other room. It isn’t exactly hectic, but there’s a calm determination in each of their postures. She makes eye contact with her own reflection in the mirror and sees none of that. Broken shards of what once was, maybe, but not anymore.

  
She doesn’t know when she lost it: the groundedness, the passion without which it is quite impossible to continue.

  
Nayoung gulps. The water is deep, and she’s not very good at swimming, but she determines to get herself to shore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When a girl falls for her first love, there is no calculation. There’s no care about how deep the waters are, whether there are lifeguards around, whether you even have the ability to swim. You simply dive in headfirst, without inhibition, as if the world is a two-person world with just you and him. It’s easy to forget the bigger picture. It’s hard to remember that survival is not necessarily guaranteed.

  
It’s natural to be mad at him. In her mind, Nayoung yells that he should’ve known better. Some words are meant to be kept inside, cradled in your heart and not unleashed into the world. He should’ve known that Nayoung was the type who might actually listen and get swept away. And Seungcheol should’ve known better than anyone else that that’s more than they can ever afford. Of all people, he should’ve known.

  
When Seungcheol declares his love for her, her heart melts. It is a sort of twisted happiness. He means it as a compliment - loving her first before the world gets to see her in polished glory after the fiery furnace of training. He sees her unpolished sides and still likes her for who she is. But his confession is a double-edged sword: it also reminds her that the world is indeed not a two-person world. Yes, Seungcheol could love her first, and she would let him (and _oh, she would love him back, she really would_ ), but at the end of the day, she has to be shared with everyone else. And at the end of the day, he would also have to be shared, too. Indeed, there’s no such thing as living in vacuum.

  
A vacuum - Nayoung can control. Everything else - the reality they live in - there is no way she can.

  
And so when he calls her five days later, leaving voicemails apologizing for putting her between a hard place and a rock and sending her tens of unreciprocated texts, Nayoung can’t do anything except turn off her phone with tears welling up in her eyes. She has to fight the urge to repeat his voicemails, just to hear his voice one more time. She even buys an alarm clock (cheap, from the dollar store) so that she doesn’t have to use her phone as one. It’s plastic and ugly, but never mind that. Anything less would weaken her resolve and send her back off the deep end after she’s managed to haul herself onto the shore.

  
That month, after grueling hours and willing herself to think only about her future, she gets the best evaluation in a long time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Once in awhile, though, she finds herself going to the second floor practice room, her feet moving on their own accord. Out of habit, she brings two yogurt drinks.

  
It is familiar: the cold wall pressed against her back, darkened lights casting shadows all around.

  
Part of her waits for him to come, but he never does.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

A couple days after her monthly evaluation she finally texts him back:

  
“I’m so sorry.”

  
She doesn’t know why she even expected a reply.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2014, she gets called up by the company to take part in San E and Raina’s “Midsummer Night’s Sweetness” promotions along with Mingyu, and sometimes Wonwoo. She likes them both; she really does. The company mostly thinks they just look good together. She goes along with it because it reminds her that she’s one step closer to her goal of debuting. They get to experience the wonders of the music shows, a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes lives of real-life idols. Once, they’re monitoring themselves on TV, and Mingyu is so happy he nearly trips over Nayoung’s feet.

  
By this time, the plastic alarm clock has malfunctioned and she’s back to using her phone to its full capacity. Seungcheol no longer calls, and slowly their texts get buried deep inside her inbox. In the offhand chance that they see each other in the halls, no words are exchanged, except for prolonged glances that last a second too short - incomplete sentences that will never be finished. It leaves a bitter remnant on her tongue, but it becomes sort of an acquired taste.

  
(In her secret hideout, she finds a sticky-note attached to the light switch:

  
“I still think you’re going to make it big one day. Chin up!”

  
She doesn’t know why, but she starts tearing up. The waves tickle at her toes, and she closes her eyes.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the 2014 year-end special, they’ve recruited a whole ensemble of trainees. In addition to Mingyu and herself, there’s Eunwoo, Jieqiong, Minkyung, Kyungwon, and the other Nayoung. And then there’s Wonwoo, Hansol, Soonyoung, and Junhui.

  
And then. Well.

  
And then there’s Seungcheol. It’s the first time in a long while that she gets to take a good look at him. She allows herself to drink in the sight of his heightened figure when he’s not looking, sometimes out of the corner of her eye or in the mirror’s reflection. She pretends not to see the way that Kyungwon clings onto his arm or the way that they laugh together at something on his phone screen. Mingyu has to snap Nayoung out of her daze, asking if she’s worried about anything. She simply shakes her head, willfully turning away from the other boy across the room, who is now helping Eunwoo fix something on her laptop.

  
Mostly, she feels a certain dampened sadness. The kind of sadness that you don’t let yourself feel completely but is nevertheless there. She doesn’t think she has the right to be sad about it if there was not really anything there in the first place. And yet, here she is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, now is not the time to be thinking about love, or Seungcheol. Or love. Or Seungcheol. And has she mentioned Seungcheol? Said boy, who dyes his hair an ash blond color, begins preparations for a 2015 summer debut, along with the twelve other guys. It is quite the process, but they’re experienced enough with concerts and putting together their own choreographies and composing their own songs that it just seems like an extension of all that, except on steroids. Nayoung is left to ogle at the debut process with a certain jealous awe.

  
On her side of the hallway, they are given an opportunity to go on Produce 101, and so most of the girls, including herself, set to work preparing for the evaluations.

  
And so it becomes: Seungcheol landing at the bottom of the rookie ladder and pulling himself up along with the rest of his members, and Nayoung thrown into a sea of other girls in a battle for recognition. In the end, it does seem like life is just one big competition at times.

  
There are days when she feels the urge to ask him how it’s like, how he handles the stress, how he can bear the responsibility like he does. But she had long forfeited that ability to talk to him at that level, so she grits her teeth and pushes forward because it’s all she knows how to do. Push forward until you reach the top, where there’s enough view to see the ocean. It’s prettier up here; the ocean looks better from far away, much better than being swallowed up by its waters.

  
Many tears are shed along the way, but when she finally realizes that she’s made it into the project group, on the cusp of debuting for real, she can’t help but recall Seungcheol’s words from three years ago: _“But remember, a few years from now, when you debut and it all comes true, that I said it first and loved you before anyone else did.”_  


  
He would be proud of her, wouldn’t he? She scoffs, thinking to herself that there’s no way that he still loves her, after all these years. That these words don’t matter much anymore, washed away by the passage of time.

  
But still, she remembers.

  
(Although that doesn’t mean that she’ll ever admit it to him.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The day before IOI performs at their debut showcase, Seventeen gets their first music show win.

  
May 4, 2016.

  
She types out a text, fingers clammy as she pulls up his name from her list of contacts. “Congratulations on your first win.” Should she add an exclamation mark instead?

  
Breathe in, breathe out. She ends up deleting the text before it sends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rest of the year of 2016 is filled with promotions and concerts, both with IOI and Pledis Girlz. In a way, she’s thankful for the busyness of it all. Nayoung welcomes healthy distractions. She thrives in training grounds, and she treats this whole year as preparation for the real thing.

  
She soon discovers that no one really teaches you how to be a leader of a Korean pop group. The role is more or less thrust upon you. There are times when she catches Jieqiong crying by herself in the corner, and her heart breaks because this precious girl is usually so cheerful and bubbly. Somi, as confident as she appears on camera, is in reality quite fragile and too young for this harsh reality. The other girls, too. She does what she knows best to do: wraps them in the embrace of her shaking arms, gives them the best smile she can muster, brighter than the stage lights that threaten to blind them.

  
It is times like these when she thinks of Seungcheol and wishes that she had someone to lean on, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the blink of an eye, the clock ticks past twelve, welcoming the arrival of 2017, the year of Pristin’s debut. It’s all too surreal, but the hectic preparations for their final concert before the group name reveal remind her of its reality. There is nothing more present and real than sore muscles and sleep deprivation.

  
On one particular night, when the rest of the girls have long gone back to the dorm, Nayoung stays behind to finish arranging a song. When she’s done, she drags her feet out the door after packing up her stuff.

  
She’s in the hallway when -

  
“Nayoung.”

  
His voice sounds cracked, frayed at the edges and barely holding together. The hallway seems emptier than it is, hollowed space threatening to engulf her completely.

  
She would know this voice anywhere. It’s been so long. So, so long.

  
She attempts to swallow away the parched lump in her throat, double-knotted and tangled in her shallow breaths. Breathe in, breathe out. Keep composure. So be it if her facial muscles feel paralyzed. Anything is better than -

  
“Im Nayoung, please. Look at me,” he keeps saying. He sounds desperate, but she can’t let herself believe that he’s desperate enough. It’s not worth it.

  
She takes a couple more steps forward, instantly regretting staying back late. Work ethic be damned. She hears him quickening his pace to catch up, and before she can fully comprehend it, he’s brushed past her shoulder and stopped in front of her. Only now can she see the entirety of his face, the deep eyes that she yearned to get lost in, the jawline etched deep in her memory, even every single eyelash in high definition. Of course, she doesn’t miss the dark bags under his eyes, and she wonders if her own tiredness mirrors his own. He must be more exhausted than her, she thinks to herself, her heart clenching unknowingly.

  
He gulps, not saying anything, just blinks slowly as if processing her presence before him. His lips quiver, just slightly, and she finds herself unable to take her eyes off of them. This is dangerous; he’s in too close proximity and her self-control is waning with each passing second.

  
“Nayoung,” he finally whispers, his gaze searching her own. She can’t look away now.

  
“Seungcheol,” she allows herself to reply, her voice feeling entirely not like her own, a ghost of the past uttering a name that had long faded from her verbal vocabulary. But in her heart - well, he was almost impossible to forget.

  
At that, the corners of his lips turn up in a small relieved smile. It reminds her of shared (at times, obnoxious) laughter, yogurt drinks on the second floor practice room, hushed encouragements during pre-debut performances. It reminds her of the years they had and the years they had lost. There’s still a sadness in his eyes, but his eyes have a way of shining, even when the hallway light is dimmed.

  
“Congratulations,” he says softly, and from the way he chuckles she knows that she’s not the only one having a moment of deja vu. Some things never change.

  
She wonders what exactly he’s congratulating her for but figures that it’s for anything and everything at once, to make up for all the lost years. “Thanks,” she smiles back, the knot in her throat slowly untangling itself. “I’ll continue to work hard.”

  
“Is that why you stayed behind so late?” he teases, shoving his hands in his pockets.

  
“Well, I’m going back now, and I’m not dead yet from sleep deprivation, so,” she shrugs. “You should take care of yourself, too,” she finds herself adding.

  
His expression softens even more. “You know what, Nayoung?”

  
She lifts an eyebrow. It’s odd how naturally this is all coming along. “What, Seungcheol?”

  
“What I said, a long, long time ago…” he looks at her pointedly, as if pressing his words into her skin.

  
He pauses, waiting for her to understand. She nods.

  
Seungcheol lets out the breath he was holding. _“I told you so.”_ There’s a victorious smirk on his face, but his eyes are still searching hers. There’s immense weight in his words - heavy, sometimes burdensome. It’s weird, how he makes her feel special, even after all these years.

  
“Yeah,” Nayoung concedes. “I guess, you were right. We’ve come a long way since then, haven’t we?”

  
She wants to tell him about all the times she almost texted him but didn’t, and ask him about all the moments that she had missed and wished she could’ve celebrated with him. Most of all, she wants to thank him for believing in her. But no words come, and so she settles for an exhausted smile. Exhausted, but relieved.

  
“Yes we have,” Seungcheol says. He’s still standing mere inches away, such that she has to tilt her face upward to meet his eyes. “And...well, how can I say this? We have a long way ahead of us, too.”

  
Nayoung nods, silent. She wonders what exactly he means.

  
“And since the path is so long, uh, I don’t know, I’d like to be able to talk to a certain same-aged friend along the way…” Seungcheol breaks into a grin now, cocking his head to the side as if asking a question. The unspoken added sentence: _You know, without having my voicemails and texts ignored and having to avoid you in the practice rooms._  


  
She can’t help but chuckle. He has a tendency to say things in a such roundabout manner, but it keeps her on her toes. The waves lap at her feet and she can feel herself getting sucked into the tide. “Yeah, okay.”

  
“Yeah, okay,” he echoes, still looking at her with his magnetic gaze.

  
And Nayoung laughs, because it feels like a yoke has been lifted off her shoulders, a load she didn’t know she was carrying. She finds herself being pulled into a hug and it reminds her of home.

  
Breathe in, breathe out.

  
Choi Seungcheol, leader of rising boy group Seventeen.

  
Choi Seungcheol, her breath of fresh air, her solace in her lacking moments, the boy with whom she wouldn’t mind dancing her life away.

  
She doesn’t know where the path leads, but she figures a good friend along the way wouldn’t hurt. And so she dips her feet back into the ocean and enjoys the cool water against her skin.

  
And for now, that’s more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! 
> 
> links that inspired me:  
> 1\. even if winter passes - nayoung solo (pristin) - lyrics by nayoung (the lyrics during the bridge especially give the feels) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMYwi7O-3hs
> 
> 2\. 17tv introducing the pledis girlz // (screams that seungcheol pushed seungkwan out of the way to stand besides nayoung just saying.../delu) https://youtu.be/nx9gg918tck?t=1m57s
> 
> 3\. like seventeen show 3 - ft. pledis girlz // call me maybe performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYy7Kw_2ySY
> 
> 4\. 2014 pledis girlz + svt trainees @ kbs song festival https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBJuoG1soYU


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